PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

In January 2001 a friend suggested I write something about PTSD. I told them that I thought it was a rare condition only seen in the victims of road accidents or rape. How wrong I was! After the 9/11 attack resulted in almost 3,000 deaths in New York City, PTSD has emerged as an important cause of a severe anxiety condition; the affected person has episodes of nightmares, flashbacks, intense fear, horror, or a sense of helplessness at intervals after the trauma.

Now we learn that a quarter of all veterans treated at VA hospitals after returning home from Iraq or Afghanistan have mental problems, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Over half of them had two or more distinct mental health diagnoses; and PTSD was diagnosed in over half of these.

A worse problem, however, is that only one in five of combat vets with signs of PTSD are actually screened for it on their return to the USA . Treatment, which can be effective, needs to be started early to avoid chronic mental illness and disability.

One relatively new and popular treatment approach is EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). It’s still somewhat controversial, possibly because it’s being tried in many other disorders that may not be appropriate. More traditional methods are cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, and antipsychotic medication.